02 April 2022
Charlene T. Mguni
Prosperity Sikhosana
The Bulawayo Public Library (BPL) held the second edition of the Primary level Spelling Bee yesterday morning.
The first edition of the competition was held last year and had participants from Coghlan Primary School pupils competing amongst themselves.
“This is the second edition, the first one was last year with Coghlan and this is the second one with Ross Camp,” said Pamela Mutasa, Librarian and organizer of the event.
This time around the competition was amongst Ross Camp Primary School grades six and seven pupils.
The winner for the grade six competition was Elizabeth Tembo, who got 40 words correct.
Tembo’s lucky word which made her strongest opponent, Lebohang Ncube lose to her, was “Spaghetti”.
In an interview with Tembo, the “competition was a little bit hard” hence she didn’t think she could win but she was happy she did.
For the grade seven competition the winner was Tendai Botsa.
Botsa spelt 24 words correct. His main opponent, Malone Matunhuki lost to Botsa when he failed to spell the word “Acquaintance”.
Botsa thought the competition was very intense but he overcame because he practiced everyday.
This was the students’ first attempt in a Spelling Bee competition .
A teacher from Ross Camp Primary School said their school has a Spelling Bee Club where all students willing to be part of the club can join and are trained. After training, the club chooses the best students for the competition.
The club runs for only grade five to seven.
The event is a Bulawayo Public Library (BPL) initiative and is currently headed by Pamela Mutasa who is part of the team that runs the competition.
Mutasa said the library will try to hold these spelling bees at least once a term.
“If we keep doing this, we will take all the finalists of these competitions and then they will have their own competition,” said Mutasa.
This year’s competition was different from that of last year because, last year’s competition was characterised by different words for each different participant. However, this term all students get to spell one word and whoever spelt the word wrong was knocked out.
The library hopes to continue with the spelling bee competitions until it reaches far and wide out of Bulawayo.
So far, the only school outside Bulawayo that has shown interest and wants to participate in the spelling bee competition is from Zvishavane.
The spelling bee was initiated so as to encourage a reading culture in children.
“We were looking for a way to entice kids to actually want to read. And since they like competition, they get to win something and they go back to school to brag about it. That way, more students join in”, said Mutasa.
Mutasa added;
“I’m hoping it would reach more kids, get them more excited about reading because right now we are in an age of Internet. They don’t have any reason to want to read so most kids that are here have been forced by parents, I want them to want to read. So we are starting with the spelling bee then we will have other activities so that the library doesn’t become a boring place.”
In this year’s calendar, BPL is planning to host a spelling bee for high school students too.
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